Suburbia Goes Global

Cultures collide outside the city limits

by Mark Engebretson

| July-August 2000

Ever since the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, America has been viewed as the land of opportunity. In the early 20th century, immigrants to America chose to live in cities and on farms—where the opportunities existed. Today’s immigrants increasingly are choosing the suburbs—for the same reason.

“Suburbs are on their way to becoming the most common place of residence for Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans, the groups that make up most of the country’s foreign-born population,” writes Brad Edmondson in Preservation (Jan.-Feb. 2000). Between 1990 and 1998, the number of suburban blacks increased 41 percent to 9 million; the suburban Hispanic population increased 58 percent to 11.7 million; and suburban Asians increased 76 percent to 5.2 million. Meanwhile, the non-Hispanic white share of the suburban population declined from 81 percent to 77 percent. The bottom line: The days of the homogenous suburb are numbered.

Near the nation’s capitol, for instance, recent Korean immigrants are working three or four jobs in the worst part of town so they can afford to live and raise a family in the comfortable suburb of Annandale, Virginia, home to a strong Korean community for some 20 years.

Thirty years ago, New Orleans East was predominantly white. Today, half its residents are black and half are Vietnamese. The Vietnamese people, who began arriving in 1975, found the Delta climate similar to that of their homeland, and their Catholic beliefs fit well in the community. A mid-1970s recession created a supply of affordable rental housing. Today, the Versailles Village business district is lined with dozens of Vietnamese retail establishments, and nearly 60 percent of the Vietnamese residents own homes, most worth between $100,000 and $300,000.

Fargo, North Dakota, has become home for hundreds of Somalis in recent years. And, no, it wasn’t the weather that attracted them. The immigrants discovered striking similarities between their basic values and those of the native-born white majority. As one observer told Preservation, “We all tend to be family-oriented people; our religion tells us to live a certain way, without alcohol or drugs. We fit into a conservative environment.”

Part of this changing face of the suburbs can be attributed to sprawl. Former bedroom communities have grown large enough to support a job-creating suburban economy. And immigrants with marketable skills and a working knowledge of English can often bypass the urban core and land directly where the jobs are. “A big segment of the immigration wave is college-educated and ready for a good job, especially those from certain regions, such as Asian Indians, Japanese, and many Europeans,” writes Edmondson. “The most integrated suburbs often cater to middle-class buyers with strong shared interests in nearby employers, convenient recreation, or good schools. They are often new subdivisions along the sprawling outer edges of big metro areas.”

Citing studies by University of Michigan demographer Reynolds Farley, Edmondson notes that racial segregation declines most quickly in new subdivisions. Those sparkling new developments, however, are only one piece of the suburban puzzle, says John Powell, executive director of the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota. While certain immigrants have been able to establish themselves in some of the poorer, inner-ring suburbs, they will always find obstacles to their entry into more affluent developments. “Today, metropolitan regions are divided racially and spatially into largely white and affluent suburbs and largely nonwhite and poor urban centers,” he tells Designer/Builder (Jan. 2000). “This pattern is caused by white middle-class and upper-middle-class people fleeing to the edge of the region, taking important resources and opportunity with them and erecting barriers to low-income people of color.”

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Edmondson argues, however, that where immigrants of color are likely to locate depends less on race and more on educational background. “Today’s group [of immigrants] includes millions of illegal immigrants who live in poverty, but also thousands of physicians, engineers, computer programmers, and other well-trained professionals,” he writes. “In other words, an immigrant is more likely than a native-born American to be either a Ph.D. or a high school dropout.”

Barriers do exist, Edmondson allows: “Immigrants with lower incomes and difficulty speaking English are still likely to settle in less expensive, more ethnic urban neighborhoods.”

And how well will some immigrants assimilate in America’s new suburban melting pot? In New Orleans’ Versailles Village, for instance, 25 years of American culture have had little impact on the Vietnamese community, writes Marc Leepson in Preservation: “Among young and old, in neighborhood groceries and restaurants, the language you are most likely to hear is Vietnamese.” While it’s no longer shocking to encounter a veiled Somali woman at a Fargo mall, racial tensions are not uncommon. Locals are known to grumble about social service spending on newcomers, and the shooting of an Anglo woman by a young Hispanic man four years ago sparked tensions citywide. But an alleged attack on an Iranian woman recently brought 400 people out to a rally against hate crimes. “It was a clarifying moment,” says Yoke-Sim Gunaratne, director of the local Cultural Diversity Project.

It is in those “clarifying moments” that the collision of cultures in America’s suburbs is likely to be played out in the years ahead.